Firefox 77 Released With Security Fixes, AV1 Image File Support

[brad0]

Sure, who cares about dead technology? It works great under Wayland, which is the default on the major distros these days.

It is not at all.

[Zan Lynx]

Is it much more important than hw video decoding on X?

You know that web browsers have implemented hardware video decode many, many times. Right?

The problem is that with X11 the result sucks. It can sort of be done by making a separate window that floats above the page. But you can't have overlay video controls or do CSS modifications to the video element.

The other way to do it involves sending the video stream to the card for decode. Then copy it back to the CPU. Then modify it, and copy it back to the GPU. By the time you're done, it turns out to have slower performance the doing CPU decode.

[johnp117]

any news on FF ditching Python2?
afaik - tumbleweed still maintains bits of Python2 for Firefox.

Firefox doesn't have any runtime python dependency. It's only the build system and the testing infrastructure that's in the final stages of being made fully python3-compatible.

[Gusar]

You know that web browsers have implemented hardware video decode many, many times. Right?

Never in a proper zero-copy way.

The problem is that with X11 the result sucks.

It works the exact same way in X as it does in Wayland - you use dma-buf to import the hardware decoded surface into an OpenGL context. mpv does that, as do a few other players, in both X and Wayland.

There's one difference between X and Wayland, but it happens *after* you have the surface - in Wayland rendering can be delegated to the compositor by using subsurfaces, in X you need to render yourself. But Firefox has Webrender for that, so it's not an issue. The only issue in Firefox is porting their X code from GLX to EGL. This is now in development, and once it's done, hooking up hardware decoding won't be difficult anymore.

[intelfx]

Is it much more important than hw video decoding on X?

Yes. X is dead end, no point in spending developer time there.

[treba]

Will this make hardware video decode under X more realistic?

Yes. To be more specific: it's a important step to enable Webrender by default, which already is the biggest blocker (hardware video decoding with SW renderer doesn't give a big benefit). And it the first of three steps needed for DMABUF support - after that, VAAPI support apparently can be shared (1).

1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1619523

Firefox have gotten some really nice developer tools improvements lately.

Still things I miss in Firefox:

• ...
• Web apps (Chrome have an apps tab)

I'd love to have that, too. PWAs are likely the future, especially in the mobile realm, so this is important for web devs.

[DanL]

Why, is it fictional? lol

Sorry, but I don't understand what you're asking or laughing at. Was "realistic" the wrong word?

[DanL]

The only issue in Firefox is porting their X code from GLX to EGL. This is now in development, and once it's done, hooking up hardware decoding won't be difficult anymore.

Good news! Thank you.

[Gusar]

Yes. X is dead end, no point in spending developer time there.

X has and will continue to have more than enough users that spending developer time on it is very much worth it. It'll take many years for X to disappear.

[arokh]

Sure, maybe in some years you will also enjoy hw accelerated decoding. Hope you are patient